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Wendy French

Return Ticket

The train steamed in for half an hourbefore clanking back to Devil’s Bridge.The last ride of the day so I ran, hotagainst the tide and browsersin end-of-day gift shops, the clocklosing tine against the past until I turnedthe corner by the pier, to face terraced houses,fronts peeled and blistered after yearsof salt spray and the sun still beating down.

The gap rolled over years and evenwith binoculars I can’t alter the focus,- my Aunt who lived here.We’d sit and look at the castle ruins,the quiet or angry seas. I’m caughtremembering how as a tongue tiedadolescent I’d stand and watchher walking stony beaches collectingshells while I’d dream stories of her past,captured by half-heard adult talkand how I longed to ask,What’s it like to give your child away?Each day we’d walk the cliffs and I’d tossback my breezy hair, concerned with my looks.

After many years and turning of the tidesit became my task to give her to the home.Walking from the car with her bags,before entering, she stopped to pauseat an outside world. All day she sits,cradling a cornet shell, all day I findmyself searching for herin warped paint, weather beatenwindow boxes. Debris on the beach.